Monday: Jesus, the Great Clarification
WEEK 25
MONDAY
JESUS, THE GREAT CLARIFICATION
1 Timothy 3:16
We saw yesterday that the first step in the mastery of confusion was the words Jesus had spoken to them. But there was something deeper than the words—it was the Word, the Incarnate Word, the Word made flesh, Jesus. He, as a Person, was the center of the clarification from confusion. They had a center of reference—a purifying center of reference—the Person of Jesus. He himself put content and meaning into his words. The divine illustration became the divine illumination. In his light they began to see life.
A Jewish rabbi said, “Take out Jesus from human history, and you cut out the heart.” Take Jesus out of Christianity, and you have cut out its heart. Christ would mean nothing, God would mean nothing, the Holy Spirit would mean nothing, the kingdom of God would mean nothing, if Jesus did not put meaning into all of them—the meaning of his own character and life.
When I say Christ, I think Jesus. When I say God, I think Jesus. When I say the Holy Spirit, I think Jesus. When I say the kingdom of God, I think Jesus. The important thing is that if I don’t, I put the wrong content in all of these.
Alcibiades says of Socrates: “Somehow the words of others don’t affect me much; but yours, even stray fragments passed on inaccurately at secondhand, grip the soul of everyone who hears them and make me ashamed of what I am, so that I know I couldn’t live beside you and still be it.”* If this could be said of Socrates, it is infinitely true of Jesus. The words of Jesus are guaranteed by the fact of Jesus. The fact of Jesus struck people more than his words. As someone has said, “It was not the principles to which the Jews objected, but the specific application of them in the revolutionary and redeeming figure of Jesus.” It is the Person of Jesus that saves Christianity from decay and distortion. He brings it back again and again. The Person saves the system. In him, as the Irish historian W. E. H. Lecky says, there are a principle and a power that are the secret of survival and revival. Rediscover Jesus, and there is revival.
O Jesus, in you the Word became flesh and the flesh became Word. Through your flesh we see the meaning of life. How can we ever thank you enough? We never can. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I begin with Jesus, I begin; if I don’t, I begin to have trouble and confusion.
*No published source was found for this quotation.